A body motion study of coming down the stairs photographed head on

A body motion study of descending stairs photographed from the side

Revised Final Script

Final Presentation Script

            This space is designed for inhabitation and circulation by a painter and an animator. The painter requires an open space with ample lighting with room to position their easels and subjects to be painted. Such open space and exposed lighting allows for the detailed observation a painter needs. The animator on the other hand requires a quiet and enclosed space away from distraction to allow them to focus on their animating programs and think introspectively about their project. Both are students that will need access to the existing building, which is satisfied by a public space connecting the individual occupant rooms to the façade.

            The formal aspects of the design focus on approaches of aggregated masses and axial carving voids. Components come together to form a structure of individual spaces with a heavy, massive presence. While these spaces work to define the rooms for occupation, they do not effectively address circulation. The carving voids act to transform the spaces created by the components into a connected system. Each space becomes linked to each other by becoming hollowed out and carved through by axial pathways. This allows the spaces to remain separated in their inhabitation but easily accessible to the occupants via circulation paths.  Simply accommodating the program proved to be a rudimentary solution to the design, the structure needed something to give it a formal language and not just a description of occupation.

            My design concept was largely dependent on the conglomeration of mass and the subsequent carving of those masses. This had been my concept since midterm when we completed the component exercise and I began to contemplate hybridizing the blocky form of the component model with the carved spaces of the solid/void exercise. It seemed to be a logical combination, as surely the mass of the components could be altered by axial voids as the cube of the solid/void had. The site began to influence the design with the way the components aggregated, assembling to conform to the façade and corners created by the site. This created a dynamic of upper and lower space, each with slight differences in their form and function.

            To unite my project, I arranged the components so their interior spaces aligned to allow for the introduction of circulation and inhabitation. When I realized the components were still too separated and not accessible to circulation and later program space, the carving voids offered the perfect opportunity to link the isolated spaces with one another and transform the project from an object to an inhabitable space. The upper and lower division of the project developed into the program of the occupants, a painter who needed natural lighting in the upper space, and a computer animator that needed the quiet seclusion of the lower space.

            From the critique, suggestions were made to further explore the use of the film and body position diagrams in my design, using certain aspects of the forms they produced to influence my arrangement of components. I admit it was challenging to consider all aspects and influences posed by the various exercises. Making a design that addressed program, occupants, film references, formal systems, functionality, and integration to the site meant often the whole design became disjointed as individual aspects of the design developed independently. In future designs I must remember to continuously integrate these design elements so they do not become contradictory and impossible to explain as a coherent design.

            Another focal point of the critique was the possibility or re-introducing certain design elements evident in the midterm model but lacking in the final. What interested the critics was the sheer mass of the midterm model, stating it had a presence and weight that was lost by the open planar system of the final. I partially agree to this, in that I should not have been so quick to convert the entire model to plane, perhaps instead using a slightly more circuitous carving to create interior spaces that didn’t simply mirror the outside structure. For example, the massive, sloped form at the base of the structure was turned into a hollow box that looked solid from the exterior but remained the same shape on the inside. Rather than carve out the space to the point where it is just a box, smaller spaces could be carved into the mass, creating unexpected interiors that are entirely different than the exterior shape.

            

Final Critique

Discussion from final review:

- Project was effective at addressing the design approaches that were established in the first two - projects, worked thoroughly on resolving them into one hybrid.
- Potential in the mass system, shouldn't have gotten rid of it entirely with turning it into a planar system, some parts could have remained massive.
- Carving action of voids seen in midterm model almost lost in new planar system, reads more as angled planes and not carving.
- Frame system depended heavily on the planes, acted only as bordering of openings and not on its own.
- Develop design approaches to be more than just additive and subtraction.
-Two occupants were established, but left underdeveloped, possibilities for defining further actions and inhabitation of space rather than just existing in a room.
- Access to the site needs to be further established, good physical connection but needs more circulation routes if it is to really effect the flow in and out of structure.
- Did not address influence of body diagram from film very effectively, could make occupants more connected to actions.

Final Script

Final Presentation Script

            This space is designed for inhabitation and circulation by a painter and an animator. The painter requires an open space with ample lighting with room to position their easels and subjects to be painted. Such open space and exposed lighting allows for the detailed observation a painter needs. The animator on the other hand requires a quiet and enclosed space away from distraction to allow them to focus on their animating programs and think introspectively about their project. Both are students that will need access to the existing building, which is satisfied by a public space connecting the individual occupant rooms to the façade.

            The formal aspects of the design focus on approaches of aggregated masses and axial carving voids. Components come together to form a structure of individual spaces with a heavy, massive presence. While these spaces work to define the rooms for occupation, they do not effectively address circulation. The carving voids act to transform the spaces created by the components into a connected system. Each space becomes linked to each other by becoming hollowed out and carved through by axial pathways. This allows the spaces to remain separated in their inhabitation but easily accessible to the occupants via circulation paths.

Photo-Text Final

Final Language Diagram

Design Approach A: Components aggregate to create  partially enclosed spaces.	Design Approach B: Carving dividing pathways which act to expand spaces.
Hybridization: Carving of enclosed spaces into connected contiguous circulation.
Spatial Qualities: Components create static spaces that suggest room-like enclosures while remaining open to public circulation. Carved passageways link spaces to joins formerly isolated components into a continuous publicly accessible space. Alters the separation of spaces created with the components.

Spatial Conditions

Spatial condition 1:

A grouping of spaces that imply hierarchy and depth through use of partial enclosure, boundaries between interior and exterior, height in the structure and size of the space.

Spatial Condition 2:

A linking system that carves through the spaces of the first system to connect separated spaces into coherent paths of circulation.

Hybridization:

Spaces from the first system are joined by paths from the second system forming an inhabitable space with a clear sense of movement and directional circulation.

Two occupants have been resolved as a painting major and an animation major. The painter must paint, observe, stand, and move, while the animator must sit, type, control, and systematize. Both must be able to enter the existing building for their classes but inhabit the new exterior spaces when doing work individually. The painter inhabits a room above the rest that is nearly all windows. Open walls allow for natural light to achieve true color and allow for the study of light throughout the day. The animator inhabits a lower room that is still open to ambient light, but secluded as to prevent glare. Secluded space provides a library-like setting for better concentration when working on the computer. These two rooms flank a corridor that hugs the existing facade which permits easy access to both the new rooms and the old building. Each occupant has their own entrance to their room through a set of stairs originating from the lower rooms. This way, the occupants can choose how to enter the building rather than only following the main corridor.

Design Approach A:

An additive system of components that are linked by individual spaces.

Spatial Qualities:

Follows the occupant’s oscillating action by allowing movement from the outside to inside of the existing site and the new structure.

Sits up against a wall in the site and overhangs the existing entranceway to occupy spaces around site elements.

These components create static spaces that suggest room-like enclosures while remaining open to public circulation. Each component remains a sovereign entity even in the group.

Design Approach B:

A Subtractive system that carves voids into the elements created by the component system.

Spatial Qualities:

Follows the levering and prying actions to remove pieces if the component model and reinforces rotational movement.

Improves accessibility from ground level of the site to the spaces created in the component system to allow occupation.

Carved passageways link spaces to joins formerly isolated components into a continuous publicly accessible space. Alters the separation of spaces created with the components.

Soiled and neglected industrial sites provide Smithson with an allegory to the city that is not as regulated. These structures are obviously of human creation and meant to perform a set of functions, much like a city is organized. However, these spaces differ drastically in that they are not meant for habitation. The human factor is left unconsidered, the priority of the structures being some industrial process that need not interact with humans except for their operators. Thus, these become realms of machines, expanses populated not by humans but by hulking masses of masonry and metal, blind to the human cities they surround and serve. Cities differ only in that the hunks of masonry are tuned to human interaction and as a result are molded and maintained by their constant visibility. A city must look the part up to the expectations of its inhabitants. It is a groomed space, organized and dressed up for show solely because of its constant audience. Industrial spaces lack the formality. They remain functional just as a city, but are just that, functional, not tied up in ribbon for constant display to a judgmental populace. Both spaces perform their service regardless of outward appearance, which upsets the superiority of cities to the industrial complexes that support them. If both spaces are working properly, why should the prim and proper city be any more important than the disheveled factory? This division stems from the visibility of the two sites, as a densely populated city is under constant scrutiny, industrial centers are kept out of sight and out of mind of the wider world, to the point of outsourcing to other countries. A desire for a clean beautiful city or pristine suburbs has created an unsustainable "not in my backyard" effect, where the consumers of industrial products are so distant from industry that they cannot know how or where things are manufactured. This hinders the improvement of industry, because it is near impossible to enforce labor or sustainability regulations from such a distance.

Monuments of Passaic New Jersey

This functions as a tour itinerary because of Smithson's diction and movement from one place to another. He writes as if dictating details of each monument to an audience while touring each area.
Smithson tells stories of open spaces populated by objects. These entities mark areas and conform to landscapes that give them living qualities. He further personifies structures and objects by noting their actions as human. The spatial practices dominant in the narrative are ones of roaming, meandering and observing the environment around these monuments. This is meant to look at these structures and discuss them as monuments even though they appear ordinary. Using careful observation and spatial language transforms the blighted landscape into noteworthy monuments.
The places created in Smithson's essay are ordinary spaces that he provides imaginative descriptions of in order to transform the meaning of the space. He demonstrates that spaces are not simply static arrangements of objects, but able to be altered by various descriptive techniques. This effectively brings new meaning to a seemingly ordinary space.
These monuments mark boundaries such as the physical crossing of a river or the division between structured and chaotic land. He spends time on roads which are deliberately structured and in muddy fields that are emblematic of disorder. These disheveled spaces lend themselves to otherworldly description, appearing absolutely ordinary yet eerie simultaneously. Such landscapes of noisy rubble and decrepit industry stir thoughts of the "other side" of our world, as such spaces are so obvious and omnipresent yet are not often parts of daily life.
The spaces Smithson describes are made legible by describing the monuments in them, but left ambiguous as to its purpose, origin, or exact context. The structures appear to be regulated objects, erected for specific purposes and maintained to that end, but in the context of the landscape are disorderly and unregulated.
The tour suggests observation and analysis of these structures as monuments, which establishes a way of understanding these objects and spaces. This allows some kind of understanding, but remains a prescribed and set system of analysis.

In the shot where Levitch discusses the phallic nature of the Empire State Building there are many frames interacting. One frame is the bus windows behind Levitch as he talks to the passengers, giving us a vague understanding of the street the passengers are witness to. This frame shifts in the next shot to looking up between the buildings, eradicating the ground plane from our understanding of the scene. The streets are not seen but implied by the canyons made by the buildings. These canyons extend upwards and flank the looming presence of the ESB, creating a narrow frame that accentuates the vertical dimensions of the city.  An imposing silhouette of the ESB itself creates yet another frame that shapes what little patches of sky remain visible into the negative space, a perfect compliment, to the solid structure of the architecture.
How is Levitch's description of the ESB compare to his view of the grid plan? Are they both regulating anti-cruises as he defines the grid plan to be, or does he empathize with the Empire State as much as he does with the Brooklyn Bridge?
How does such a physical connection to New York differ from our conventional experience?

Relevant Quotes:

"The violence that my brother (didn't quite know he) saw in the figures of squatters has been re-choreographed in the ensuing fifteen or 50 years"

"The squatter is already on his feet, ready for hire, at your service."

"The bodies of obsequious squatters on the other hand, have always figured the abjection of those who must wait."

"Seen as a trace of the primitive, the servile, the alien, the homeless, the fecal, a squatting body does not cite an authority that is recognized..."

"...The city has drove into a massive physical reconstruction in seeking to rehabilitate its identity through architecture."

The high contrast black and white emphasizes the play of light on the landscape and his face, which goes along with his vivid descriptions of the city.

He represents New York because he discusses the city as though he is in a personal relationship with it, as if it were a living being that can be angry with him or pleasant to him. He is able to see past the drudgery of everyday life and find beauty in the simple play of light in the city.

He uses similar language to discuss the various landmarks on the tour as he uses to describe his relationship to the city in an attempt to convey his passion to those on the tour.

New York, as any organism, must grow or it will die. But this grown necessitates a constant restructuring of  its physical manifestation, leading to cycles of destruction and creation for the urban landscape and the inhabitants.

Cruising is his definition of how to enjoy life. One meanders and observes the confusing and undulating city before them with great awe and wonder, not concerned with the actual intent, but rather what is. The grid is both the subject of observation and a limiter to the cruise, as most of New York rests on the skeletal framework of grid roads, but he feels New York could do without the grid and be much more alive.

Memory and storytelling are understood when he addresses the tour bus occupants. He uses anecdotes of famous inhabitants of the surrounding blocks to instill wonder in his listeners, give them a sense that things happened right where they are. By telling stories so directly, they almost seem like recent happenings rather than distant historical events. He talks about George Washington's visit to a church after the first inauguration as if it had happened last week.

He moans about terracotta facing on a building, orgasms at the reflected light, embraces the piers of the Brooklyn Bridge as an impassioned lover, and notes the phallic structure of the Empire State Building. This erotic interaction with architecture is stronger than anything they are teaching us here. They tell us to think about architecture in school, when we really must learn to feel. All school has done so far is numb, I hardly note the passing of weeks and even physical pain is no longer as sharp as it once was. I am in a constant out of body experience, with the world only snapping back into focus for brief moments during a clear morning or in a dirty subway making a temporary journey home in a vain attempt to scoop up the bits I lost on my way to New York.

Occupant 1:

Shoveling

Crouching

Flinging

Rotating

Oscillating

Standing

Occupant 2:

Pulling

Pushing

Levering

Cranking

Crouching

Opening

Two body motion studies of workers in a steel mill

"The panopticon, on the other hand, has a role of amplification; although it arranges power, although it is intended to make it more economical and more effective, it does so not for power itself, nor for the immediate salvation of a threatened society: its aim is to strengthen the social forces - to increase production, to develop the economy, spread education, raise the level of public morality; to increase and multiply."

Fight Club Critical Questions

            How could Foucault’s panoptic society assisted the narrator of Fight Club in overcoming the psychological problems he suffers? Could it be that instead of needing to be free from societal constraints as he desires he needs the support and inclusion of the rest of society to overcome his troubles?

            Why does the narrator turn to the desire for destruction rather than turn to others for help? He clearly knows there is something wrong, but refuses to seek help about it. Why does giving up always seem an easier option than getting help with the problems and struggles we face throughout life?

            Organized society discourages the use of physical violence as an outlet for emotion and strife, yet our current media maintains a glamorous image of violent acts. How can the two greatest forces of ideas conflict with one another? One seeks to prevent acts of violence and the other instigates them.

For our project the first moment of translation occurred with the creation of plans of our site. The site was the existing East Building and the surrounding courtyard. In order to begin our design processes, we first had to accurately measure the buildings dimensions and put together a digital model of the space. This digital model was then translated into printed axonometric views that formed a base for the drawing sets. Geometries were then outlined and extracted from existing building elements to form new spatial expressions. These drawings then influenced a 2.5-D model as a beginning for the eventual occupation of the space around the original structure.